Tenor Michael Colvin’s poor luck turned out serendipitous for listeners at the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra’s concert of Hadyn’s The Creation Thursday night. Due to illness, Colvin had to sit the night out. His last-second replacement, Rochester’s Gregory Kunde, stole the show.

Besides an obvious quick-command of the score, Kunde rarely even glanced at its pages in his hand. His stage presence is dominating, his voice indulgent. Kunde’s bel canto ring seemed almost too rich for Hadyn, a more reserved work than Italian opera, though it kept the audience riveted in a work that can sometimes put listeners into a restful lull.

Baritone Stephen Powell gave a confident performance, though without the full range of Kunde. Diction was troublesome for soprano Barbara Shirvis, who could have brought her bright voice up a notch in volume. Powell and Shirvis, a married couple, fittingly sang the words of Adam and Eve. Their connection would have been more noticible if Shirvis hadn’t been burried in her handheld score.

The Nine Inch Nails/Jane’s Addiction concert that NIN frontman Trent Reznor had announced was coming to Darien Lake Performing Arts Center was dropped last week before it ever became official. But perhaps Coldplay on June 1 at the venue will sooth the bad feelings. Tickets ($41, $65.50, $85.50 and $103.50) go on sale at 10 a.m. Monday at www.livenation.com, Blockbuster and (877) 598-8694.

Also coming to Darien Lake is theat “Rock and Rebels” tour 7:30 p.m. July 14 with Kid Rock and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Tickets ($30 for the lawn, with a four-pack of lawn tickets available for $99, $55 and $75) go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday at the same outlets.

Walter Butts, a Le Roy native who teaches English at Hesser College in Manchester, N.H., has been appointed poet laureate of New Hampshire.

The five-year honorary post doesn’t come with any particular responsibilities or salary, but Butts already has plans. He’ll work with local bookstores and arts groups to promote poetry through readings and other activities.

He holds a master of fine arts degree from Vermont College and has lived in Rochester, Boston, Albany and New York City. He has published three books of poetry: Sunday Evening at the Stardust Cafe, Movies in a SmallTown and The Required Dance.

Kids can’t watch dinosaurs being fed at Strong National Museum of Play – that only happens at Jurassic Park. But recently, visitors at 1 Manhattan Square have been clustering around a new 1,700-gallon aquarium to see a Snowflake Moray Eel and Blue Spotted Stingray chow down on jumbo-sized shrimp.

The staff considerately feeds them by hand, so other creatures in the tank can’t steal their juicy scampi al dente. The Rainbow Reef Aquarium also holds corals, starfish, sea urchins, crabs and a variety of flamboyantly colored fish. They’re treated to a special house blend of baby shrimp, chopped fish and plankton. Leafy vegetables, peas and broccoli also are available to finicky eaters.

The exhibit mimics the diverse environment of the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia. Near the aquarium, flat-screen monitors flash videos and data about the 150 species found inside. Two adjacent tanks hold sea anemones. a shark, puffer fish and other marine life. Call (585) 263-2700 for more information.

Greetings. The Critical Mass is taking the next week or so off, under bartender’s orders. When I return, there’ll be a quiz on my two favorite Web headlines that appeared the last couple of weeks on the MSNBC site:

Twittering to his fans this afternoon, Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor delivered some bad news to western New York: Never mind. The NIN/Jane’s Addiction rock concert announced last week for Darien Lake Performing Arts Center is off. However, the Web sites for both Coldplay and Darien Lake promoter Live Nation confirm that the British rockers Coldplay will be at the venue June 1.

Reznor said the June 3 NIN show has been moved to Mansfield, Mass. “Don’t shoot the messenger,” Reznor pleaded. Tickets for the show here had not yet gone on sale. Nine Inch Nails’ last area appearance had been 2006 at the Blue Cross Arena. Reznor’s Twitter address: http://twitter.com/trent_reznor.

Ticket prices for Coldplay are not yet announced, but will go on sale at 10 a.m. March 23 at www.livenation.com.

Sibley Music Library at the Eastman School of Music is making public domain scores available digitally for anyone with an Internet connection. It just received a $273,820 Preservation and Access Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities to digitalize 10,000 to 12,000 public domain scores over the next two years from the library’s circulating collection that are owned by only two or fewer libraries in the world.

This extends a project the library has been working on since about 2004, resulting in 4,000 scores already digitally accessible. Public domain includes scores written before 1923; for European scores, it includes composers who have died at least 70 years ago. Downloads are free and available on the University of Rochester Digital Repository, UR Research (http://urresearch.rochester.edu). As of February, the site has already reached 2 million downloads.

Jim Farrington, head of public services at Sibley and a co-administrator of the project, says the library is focusing on lesser-known scores that aren’t purchasable through a publisher or available in modern editions.

To see Ben Mac An Tuile today, you’d never suspect how close the singer and guitarist with one of the most popular Irish bands in the city, the Wild Geese, came to being the ex-singer and guitarist of the Wild Geese. Visiting his native Ireland in October 2007, he was hit by a painful staph infection. More specifically, a flesh-eating bacteria. Mac An Tuile was 57 at the time, and that kind of thing kills most people his age.

Yet there he was, a couple of weeks ago at Johnny’s Irish Pub, bounding around onstage on his new hip (the bacteria destroyed his old one) and pounding down a Guinness or two. He was thinking of canceling the gig, but his sister Ann wanted to see him play before she went in for cancer surgery two days later.

Jeff Spevak has shaken the hand of Johnny Cash. He has done a shot of whiskey with Bo Diddley. He sang with Tina Turner for 12 seconds. His Top 10 albums of all time include 17 by Bob Dylan. He likes dogs, the Cleveland Indians and wine. His favorite books are Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He likes to eat Chilean sea bass.

Catherine Roberts: Lead Local Editor/Life, is the mother of two teenage boys. She's so used to being overbooked that when there's a spare moment, she feels the needs to know what's going on around town to fill the gap. Favorite things in Rochester include the museums, Red Wings games and concerts. But most of the time, you'll find her and her husband, Chad (the Democrat and Chronicle's overnight editor), at a bowling alley, the sidelines of a ball field or walking a dog in their Irondequoit neighborhood or Durand-Eastman Park. If you have any ideas, please email at cathyr@DemocratandChronicle.com

Diana Louise Carter was born at Rochester General Hospital the same year it opened and reared in Bristol, Ontario County. After college and grad school, her first reporting job was on a small newspaper in Western Massachusetts. She returned to Rochester in late 1987 to work for the Democrat and Chronicle. Carter covers agriculture and banking. She lives in the Upper Monroe neighborhood of Rochester with her husband and three children.

Anna Reguero, a former Democrat and Chronicle music critic, a clarinetist and a graduate of Eastman School of Music, is a doctoral student in musicology at State University of New York at Stony Brook.